Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

33

Sunrise did not exist here. The constant ceiling of clouds blinded the planet to its star. Night fell as black as eternity, and the days existed in a perpetual dusk. Vaughn looked up through the forward windows and saw that the dark had been replaced, not by the reds and oranges and yellows normally associated with dawn, but by the diurnal gray of this shrouded world. Shortly after penetrating the clouds, Chaffeehad passed the terminator and flown into the night, and the shuttle had now emerged once more into the dim daylight of the planet.

“What’s our status?” Vaughn asked in the quiet cabin. Nobody had spoken for a while. Ch’Thane looked up, but Prynn did not, instead keeping her gaze on the flight-control console.

“We estimate that we’re less than an hour from the site,” Prynn said, answering first, even though she had not looked up from her panel.

“‘Estimate’?” Vaughn asked.

“As we get nearer the source of the pulse,” ch’Thane explained, “the energy readings are increasing. It’s inhibiting full sensor contact, making our scans erratic.”

“I see,” Vaughn said. He peered through the windows at the relentlessly monochromatic sky above. Below, a mountainous region spread before the shuttle. Their path around the planet had so far taken them only over land.

“We’re getting pretty good reads within about a hundred kilometers of the shuttle,” Prynn added, “but little beyond that range.”

Vaughn felt his weight shift as Chaffeeveered to port. Ahead, one of the taller mountains in the range slipped away to starboard. Vaughn waited until Prynn had leveled the shuttle, and then he dropped a hand heavily on the back of ch’Thane’s chair. “Ensign, since we’re so close, I’d like you to prepare our equipment.” They had brought scientific equipment with them with which to better examine the source of pulse, some of which would require Shar’s expertise to set up.

“Yes, sir,” ch’Thane said, rising from his chair.

Vaughn stepped aside, allowing the ensign to pass on his way to the rear compartment. Then Vaughn moved forward and settled into the seat at the starboard console. This was, he realized, the first time that he and Prynn had been essentially alone since he had visited her quarters back on the station. He glanced over at Prynn, who remained intent on her own console. Vaughn felt a strong urge to say something to her, to attempt to draw her out. He wanted to engage her in a dialogue that would, even for a short time, pull them out of their positions as commander and ensign, and push them into their roles as father and daughter. With so much at stake right now, Vaughn understood the comparative insignificance of his failed relationship with Prynn, but he also knew that they would have little to do until they reached the source of the pulse.

The shuttle angled again, this time to starboard. Vaughn looked out the windows and saw another large, rocky peak sliding away from their path. Beyond it, another chain of mountains reached upward, some seeming almost to touch the dark sky above. It reminded him of a murky landscape painting he had once seen a long time ago, though he could not immediately recall when or where that had been.

“Sir,” Prynn said, momentarily startling Vaughn out of his thoughts. “Those two mountains ahead of us?”

“Yes?” Vaughn said, looking first at Prynn, and then back out the windows.

“I can keep us low and take the shuttle between them at our current altitude,” Prynn said, “or I can ascend and split them higher up.”

“Why would we fly higher if we didn’t have to?” Vaughn wanted to know.

“Because if we go in low,” Prynn explained, “we’ll have to pass through a divide between the mountains that’s about two hundred meters wide.”

Vaughn slowly nodded his head. Traveling at speed through such a narrow channel, he knew, would leave very little margin for error. “Can you do it?” he asked, peering over at Prynn to judge her response. For the first time, she returned his gaze, a confident expression on her face.

“Yes,” she said seriously. Then, as though remembering that she wished to conduct all contact with him in an exclusively official manner, she added, “Sir.” No animosity or anger entered her mien, only a sense of simple professionalism.

“Then do it, Ensign,” he told her, careful to keep the pain he felt from sounding in his voice, instead treating her as she obviously wanted to be treated. I can’t fault her for that,Vaughn realized; Prynn was giving him precisely what he had demanded from her. The rest, he could only hope, would come in time.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and she turned her attention back to her panel. She tapped at various touchpads on her console, her movements fluid and unrushed, as though she were playing a delicate instrument. The beeps and chirps from her console sounded almost like a melody. Vaughn could feel no changes in the shuttle’s flight, but when he consulted his panel, he could see them on the sensor displays.

As Chaffeeneared the two mountains, Vaughn looked up through the windows. The two peaks seemed to rise above the shuttle like twin giants. The sharp, severe appearances of crags and tors loomed above the shuttle like unspoken threats, promising an unforgiving reception in the event of a piloting mistake. Chaffeeraced toward the area where the two mountains came together, and for just a moment, Vaughn reconsidered his decision and thought about ordering Prynn to take the shuttle higher.

But then it was too late. Chaffeeroared into the chasm between the two huge masses. The sheer rock walls on either side of the shuttle rocketed past, their surfaces a blur. Vaughn heard more electronic tones as Prynn continued to adjust their course. He waited for Chaffeeto emerge from its difficult route, and as the seconds passed, the flight between the mountains seemed to take too long. The image of the chasm dead-ending flew through Vaughn’s mind, the shuttle slamming into the cold rock face at such speed that there would not even be time to realize that death was at hand.

But Prynn would have consulted the scans of the chasm, and if the sensors had not provided a clear picture, if their erratic functioning had not allowed her to see all that she had needed to see, then she would not even have proposed their current course. Vaughn knew that, having great respect for Prynn’s piloting abilities, including whatever judgments those skills required of her. By all accounts, including his own limited observations, she numbered among the best in Starfleet.

Gradually, the shuttle began to shimmy. As the trembling increased, Vaughn examined the sensor displays for the reason. Had an energy discharge from the clouds struck them, as one had struck Defiant,or had Chaffeesuffered some system problem? Vaughn grabbed the edge of his console with both hands, steadying his gaze and allowing him to see the readouts. A strong wind funneled through the chasm, he saw, no doubt buffeting the shuttle and causing its shaking.

And then, in an instant, the shuttle steadied. On either side of Chaffee,the chasm walls fell away, and the shuttle flew out into open air. Below, several smaller peaks rose up, but they were set widely apart, allowing the shuttle to skim through them with ease.

Vaughn peered over at Prynn. Not for the first time, he saw her mother in her—in her delicate but intense features, but also in her temperament. Like Ruriko, Prynn would do what needed to be done, regardless of the personal consequences.

“You’re an excellent pilot,” he told her quietly.

She looked over at him, and for one brief moment, Vaughn felt a sense of connection– personalconnection—with her. Her eyes seemed to clear, and her expression to soften, and he had the sense that she had let go of all that had come between them. He so regretted what he had done, and now might finally be the time to beg for her forgiveness.

But in the next instant, Prynn’s walls had gone back up. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and she looked back down at her console. Vaughn watched her a moment longer, thinking of what he could possibly say to reach her, but then he turned back to his own panel. With an effort, he let it all fade from his mind, concentrating on the sensor readings laid out before him. He and Prynn sat that way for long minutes, the silence keeping them apart.

As Chaffeeeventually neared the end of the mountain range, scans indicated a city ahead. The shuttle had passed several already along its route, all of them devoid of life. Most of the cities had revealed the manner in which they and their inhabitants had fallen, if not the reasons for their demise. One city had consisted of nothing but the blackened husks of buildings, burned and left standing like some charred monument to death. Another had been filled from one end to the other, and beyond the metropolitan limits, with ground vehicles, all pointing away from the city as though the entire population had attempted to flee at once, and then been trapped together in their panic. Another had evidently been under siege, battlements raised along its outskirts in defense against a fleet of military-looking vehicles surrounding it; both the attackers and the attacked had been battered in apparent mutual annihilation. Strangely enough, there seemed to be no indication that the pulse had been the cause of any death or destruction.

The shuttle cleared the last of the mountains and flew in over foothills. The city spread out on the plain beyond, a large, modern collection of buildings that stretched for kilometers. Vaughn consulted the sensors and read no life signs. “Can you bring us in lower?” he asked Prynn.

“Yes, sir,” she said. She nosed Chaffeedownward, leveling off as the shuttle cleared the edge of the city.

Vaughn peered through the windows and saw only stillness. As with the other cities they had passed, scans put the age of this one at hundreds of years, but unlike the others, there were no indications of what had happened to the people who had dwelled there. The buildings looked worn by time and wind, but stood relatively intact. The city appeared untouched by any sort of destruction, and unaffected by any mass exodus. Vaughn could easily visualize entering any of the buildings below to find it looking as though somebody still lived there. Would there be any indications that the inhabitants had abandoned their homes, or that they had been driven out? Or would they appear to have been there one moment, and then unaccountably gone the next? Or would we find the remnants of bodies?Vaughn asked himself, his thoughts running, as they seldom did, to the morbid. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, but instead, another thought bloomed: all the inhabitants who had lived in the city below were still there, dead by their own hand.

Vaughn gripped the side of his console and took a deep breath. He had to get hold of himself; such thoughts did not serve him or the mission. He looked over at Prynn as she calmly piloted the shuttle. “Take us back up,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Prynn acknowledged, and she quickly pulled Chaffeeback up to the altitude at which they had flown around the planet. Vaughn watched as the ground retreated below, and he felt unexpectedly pleased as the shuttle rose. Concentrating on his odd feelings, he was surprised when Prynn spoke again. “What happened on this planet?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Vaughn said, continuing to look at the city as it passed beneath them. Discarding his peculiar thoughts, he tried to speculate about what could have caused such widespread but disparate destruction of the civilization here. The pulse,he told himself, although he did not understand how that could be. He could only hope that the answers lay ahead of them. And to Prynn, once more, he said, “I don’t know.”

The energy readings had increased dramatically as Chaffeeneared the source of the pulse. Vaughn peered over ch’Thane’s shoulder at the sensor displays; the ensign had returned to the cockpit after preparing the scientific equipment. Scans seemed to indicate at least one more city between Chaffee’s current position and the source of the pulse, although readings in that direction were more erratic now than ever. Directly below the shuttle, surface conditions read calm and cool, with temperatures hovering around ten degrees. Gravity pulled marginally weaker than on Earth, and the atmosphere held a slightly higher oxygen content, though it was certainly breathable. Good,Vaughn thought. Unless conditions at the site differed significantly, they would be able to disembark Chaffeewithout having to use environmental suits; as streamlined and sophisticated as the Starfleet issues had become over the years, Vaughn found that they still hindered natural movement.

“I’ll get our gear,” he told Prynn and ch’Thane. He turned from the forward console and headed for the rear of the shuttle. He stepped into the aft compartment, which doubled as a transporter pad. Moving past the scientific equipment, he reached for a section of the starboard bulkhead. He opened a small storage closet, in which hung outerwear for the crew. He gathered this up in one arm, then pulled out a small locker, about half a meter long and not quite as deep or as tall; the box contained phasers, tricorders, and beacons.

Vaughn carried the gear back out into the main cabin. He dumped the jackets and his old field coat onto a chair, and then set the locker down on the floor. He squatted before the box, unlatched it, and then flipped open its lid, revealing four phasers packed in the upper tray. He pulled one free and attached it to his hip.

A sudden movement in Vaughn’s peripheral vision caught his attention. He turned and looked toward the bow of the shuttle in time to see a dark form move out of sight off to starboard. He stood up and started forward. “What—” he started to ask, concerned that he already knew the answer, and then the shuttle shuddered violently. Vaughn flew across the compartment into the port bulkhead.

“We’ve been struck by an energy surge from the clouds,” ch’Thane called, confirming Vaughn’s suspicions. “Engine power is down thirteen percent.”

“I’m taking us down,” Prynn said, not waiting for authorization. Vaughn felt Chaffeetilt down toward the ground. He looked through the forward windows and saw an empty plain below. Once they landed, they could assess the damage, make needed repairs as quickly as possible, and continue on their way.

Another blast thundered into Chaffee.Vaughn felt the shuttle drop precipitously, a wavering sensation filling his stomach. He thought they would fall from the sky, but then Prynn somehow reined Chaffeeback under her control.

“There’s another—” ch’Thane yelled, but too late. Another bolt of energy struck the shuttle. Vaughn hurtled toward the rear of the cabin. He slammed into the bulkhead and collapsed onto the deck. When he looked up, he was amazed to see Prynn still at her station. Ch’Thane, obviously knocked from his seat, now wrestled his way back to it.

Suddenly, a tremendous report shot through the cabin, followed by the horrible moan of tearing metal. Vaughn looked up at the ceiling and saw the dark, writhing sea of clouds above. For a moment, his mind could not process the image, and then he realized that a meter-square section of Chaffee’s roof had been torn open. He saw the blue tinge of an emergency force field and hoped it would hold. Ch’Thane called out, but Vaughn could not make out his words.

Vaughn felt the shuttle veer to port, then dip, and he wondered if Prynn was running evasive maneuvers. Just get us to the ground in one piece,he thought.

Holding on to a chair, Vaughn pulled himself back to his feet. He steadied himself with a hand to the bulkhead, then shuffled back into the aft compartment. He reached the transporter controls and punched at the touchpads, intending to establish a lock on Chaffee’s crew of three. If Prynn could not keep control of the shuttle, then he could beam them—

The transporter panel was dead.

Vaughn peered back through the doorway and out through the forward windows. The ground approached quickly, and he saw Prynn still working hard at the conn. Then another surge hammered into Chaffee,and air screamed through the breach as the shuttle decompressed, the force field obviously gone. The hull screeched as the compromised structure struggled against the forces of its flight. An acrid scent, like that of molten rock, filled the cabin.

Vaughn watched as a shadowy form pushed into the cabin through the hole in the ceiling. An amorphous, shifting mass of gray whirled through the compartment. Ch’Thane turned and saw it just as it reached him. A dark wisp seemed to graze the blue flesh of the ensign’s face, and he screamed. The terrible, ugly wail rose loud enough to be heard over the wind, and over the sounds of Chaffeebreaking up around them. Vaughn had rarely heard such a cry of agony, but something else about it struck him: it seemed less like a cry of pain than of anguish.

Chaffeeswerved to port then. The gray tendril withdrew from the cabin as though the shuttle had jerked itself away from its clutches. Their forward momentum slowed, and the wind dropped significantly. For an instant, Vaughn thought that Prynn—amazingly still at her post—might actually be able to land them safely.

And then Chaffeecrashed.

34

Bashir crawled through the Jefferies tube, a medical tricorder clutched in one hand. The metal grating that formed the base of the conduit rattled as his knees came down on the rigid surface. Voices echoed back to him from around a corner up ahead, the identities of those speaking impossible to distinguish above the din he made as he moved forward.

Bashir reached the intersection of three tubes and turned down the one to his right. Not too far in front of him, Ezri, Lieutenant Nog, and Ensign Gordimer sat one after the other in the enclosed space. Beside them, Bashir saw, several access panels had been removed from one of the bulkheads, revealing some of the ship’s circuitry within. As he neared the trio of officers, he slowed, quieting his approach so that he would not interrupt their conversation.

“– completed the scans,”said a woman’s voice that did not belong to Ezri, obviously being transmitted through a combadge. “The readings only occur at your location. There’s nothing on the exterior of the hull or anywhere inside the ship.”Bashir recognized the voice as that of Ensign Merimark.

“What about transporter signatures?” Ezri asked, glancing up at Bashir, but clearly still speaking with the ensign. Her words rang in the tube, echoing down the long metal conduit.

“We found none,”Merimark said.

“All right. Thank you,” Ezri said. “Dax out.” She raised a hand to her combadge and closed the channel, then addressed Bashir. “Doctor,” she said. He understood the need for such formality, but he also found it somewhat amusing, considering that she had come here directly from their cabin. For that matter, he had also just come from there, not long after she had left.

“Lieutenant,” he responded, acknowledging Ezri. He nodded at Nog and Gordimer, who both responded in kind. Nog, he noticed, also held a tricorder, one doubtless configured for engineering use. Bashir lowered himself to a half-sitting, half-lying position in the cramped space. He peered across the conduit at the exposed circuitry—the middle of the three open sections was dark—and saw what appeared to be a bypass of some sort. A bundle of optical fibers emerged from one section, snaked along the floor of the Jefferies tube past the middle section, and connected back into the third. “What’s going on?” he asked, the reason Ezri had called him here not immediately evident to him.

“Last night,” she explained, “we experienced a minor power disruption in engineering.” He recalled her mentioning that when she had returned to their quarters last night. “Ensign Leishman has circumvented the problem—” She swept her hand through the air above the obviously improvised bypass. “—but this appears to have been the source of the disruption.” Ezri indicated the middle section.

Bashir looked, but beyond the circuitry being dark—and therefore without power, he assumed—he observed nothing out of the ordinary. He searched for something he could recognize as foreign, but saw only the expected assemblage of isolinear optical chips, fiber-optic cables, and routing and junction nodes…except—“Is this what you’re referring to?” he asked, pointing to a gray substance pooled along the length of the middle section.

“Careful, Doctor; don’t get too close,” Ensign Gordimer said. “We’re not sure what we’re dealing with here.”

Bashir had not intended to touch the amorphous mass without scanning it first, but he understood that Gordimer’s position in security required him to practice caution. “Don’t worry,” Bashir said, withdrawing his hand, but continuing to try to get a good look at the substance in the poorly illuminated tube. The mass appeared inert and viscous, almost like a thick pool of grease, but dark gray rather than black. “I don’t think it’s going to leap out at me.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Doctor,” Nog said.

“What?” Bashir asked, turning his head to look over at the engineer.

“We haven’t seen it moving,” Ezri clarified, “but the ship had an unexplained hull breach at about the same time as the power disruption in engineering.” Bashir remembered her mentioning that last night as well.

“You think this entered the ship through the breach and traveled here?” Bashir asked, peering back down at the patch of gray. He opened his medical tricorder, and started scanning.

“Possibly,” Ezri said. “Nothing has transported onto or off the ship, so we don’t know how else this might have gotten here.”

Bashir studied the display on the tricorder. “I am getting energy readings,” he said.

“Which makes sense,” Nog said. “Somehow, this thing interrupted the flow of power, causing the outage in engineering, but it also carried enough energy to prevent the secondary system from engaging.”

“You say that as though it were planned,” Bashir told him. “But stars have energy, and they’re not alive. This substance may simply be holding an electrical charge.” He continued examining the tricorder scan. “These energy readings, though…”

“They’re nothing you’re familiar with,” Ezri finished for him.

“No,” Bashir agreed.

“They match the readings we took of the pulse,” Nog said. “And of the clouds surrounding the planet.”

“Really?” Bashir said, looking up again. He reached up and wiped a hand across his forehead, his hand coming away wet with perspiration; the air in the Jefferies tube was still and close.

“We think that when Defiantwas struck by the energy surge from the cloud cover, this may have been deposited on the ship,” Nog said.

“And eaten through the shields and the hull, and then crawled here?” Bashir asked, his tone conveying his skepticism.

“We’ve seen stranger things,” Ezri said.

“Yes, of course, but this—” He peered back down at the substance, and then consulted the tricorder once more. “I’m reading no organic compounds, nothing beyond a very rudimentary physical structure, no musculature…nothing to suggest a morphogenic matrix…I think it’s very unlikely that this object is alive.”

“Is that conclusive?” Ezri wanted to know.

Bashir touched a control on the tricorder and ended the scan. As he folded the device back into its compact carrying form, he looked over at her. “No,” he said. “I’ll need to run a series of more complex tests.”

“All right,” Ezri said. “I’d like you to do that.” She turned to Gordimer. “Ensign, I want you to go up to the transporter and beam the object directly to the medical bay.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doctor,” she went on, “establish a containment field about the object while you study it.”

Bashir noted the seeming confidence with which Ezri practiced command; the set of her body, the certainty in her tone and words, the quick decisions, all painted her as a person completely in charge of both herself and the situation. And yet, knowing as he did the personal price she was still paying for the loss of Ensign Roness, he wondered just how well her professional calm and resolve, forced as they must be, actually served her. He hoped that the mask she wore while on duty would not blind her to…well, to anything. Commander Vaughn seemed to find such behavior constructive, but Bashir felt far less sanguine about it. He believed that Ezri should not be making decisions, either for the ship or for herself, either concentrating too much on the death of Roness, or completely ignoring it.

He mentioned none of this now. Nor did he know when he would be able to speak with her again about such matters; he hoped he would not have to. All he said now was “Aye, sir.” Then he turned and crawled back down the Jefferies tube the way he had come, headed for the medical bay as he had been ordered, with Ensign Gordimer thumping along behind him.

Bashir wheeled the portable stand to the center of the empty medical bay and set its brake. The white apparatus stood as tall as a diagnostic bed, with upper and lower shelves about half that size. He felt along the side of the upper shelf until he located the small control pad there, and then he activated the unit’s locator; the signal, like that of a combadge, would facilitate transport. He also set the parameters for a containment field, which he would establish about the substance once it had been beamed to the medical bay. He tapped his combadge. “Bashir to Gordimer.”

“This is Gordimer,”came the ensign’s immediate response. “I’m at the transporter, sir.”

“I’m ready here,” Bashir told him. “I’ve initiated a transport locator.”

After a momentary pause, Gordimer said, “I’ve got it. I’m all set.”

Bashir told the security officer to stand by, then tapped his combadge again. “Bashir to Dax.”

“Dax here,”she said.

“We’re ready to transport,” he informed her.

“All right,”she said. “Dax to Gordimer. Energize.”

Bashir took a step back from the stand and waited for the bright white streaks and the high-pitched drone of the transporter. He waited, but nothing happened.

“This is Gordimer,”the security officer said. “I can’t get a transporter lock on the object. The transport sensors can read its energy, but they can’t establish a lock for some reason.”

“Try using a positional transport,”Nog suggested, his voice coming over the channels opened to Dax. “Beam everything up to five centimeters above the bulkhead that the substance is sitting on.”

“Yes, sir,”Gordimer said. “Resetting the transporter… energizing.”

This time, the light of the transporter shimmered above the stand in the medical bay, accompanied by a familiar hum. But when the light faded and the hum quieted, nothing had materialized there.

Nothing but air,Bashir thought, knowing that the positional transport would have attempted to beam everything within its target location. “This is Bashir,” he said. “I’ve still got nothing here.”

“The substance is still here,”Dax said. “Ensign Gordimer, would y—” She stopped speaking in mid-sentence, in mid– word,with a suddenness that told Bashir that something had happened. He heard a sound like one somebody would make when punched in the stomach, the air rushing from their lungs.

“Lieutenant Dax?” he said. He waited just long enough for a response, and when none came, he said, louder, “Ezri?” He took a step toward the door, but stopped when Nog spoke.

“Doctor, the object moved, and Lieutenant Dax accidentally came into contact with it,”he said, urgency sounding in his hurried words and raised voice. “She’s lost consciousness.”

“Ensign Gordimer,” Bashir said at once. “Lock on to Lieutenant Dax’s combadge and transport her directly to biobed one in the medical bay.” For emergency situations, Bashir knew, the coordinates of various locations in the medical bay had been preprogrammed into the ship’s transporter.

“Yes, sir,”Gordimer said.

Bashir turned and sped over to the bed. “Bashir to Richter,” he said, contacting his primary medical assistant.

There was a pause, and then the sleepy voice of the nurse sounded over the comm system. “This is Richter,”she said. It was still early in the day, and Bashir had apparently just woken her.

“Krissten, we have an emergency,” he told her. “I need you in the medical bay.”

“I’m on my way,”she said without hesitation, any drowsiness she felt now gone from her voice. “Richter out.”

An instant later, the effervescent white light of the transporter filled the space above the bed, accompanied by the telltale whine. Even before Ezri had fully materialized, Bashir reached up and switched on the medical sensors. When the transport had completed, he peered down at her only long enough to see that she lay facedown, with her eyes closed and her complexion grown terribly pallid. Then he looked back up at the diagnostic display above the head of the bed. Her respiration was shallow, her heart rate down and fluttering, her neural activity nearly nonexistent—almost all of her vital signs had plummeted.

Bashir raced across the medical bay, heading for a storage cabinet. As he passed the portable stand at the center of the room, he reached out and tried to push it away. He had set the brake on it, though, and instead of rolling away, it toppled over. The stand crashed onto the deck with a clang, the sound uncomfortably loud in the quiet medical bay.

Bashir opened the cabinet and quickly pulled out a hypospray and a vial of cordrazine. As he dashed back over to Ezri, he affixed the powerful stimulant to the hypo. At the bed, he reached his empty hand to Ezri’s neck, pulling down the collar of her uniform with two fingers, her pale flesh clammy beneath his touch. He administered the hypo just below her ear, the small device hissing briefly as it worked.

On the medical display above the bed, the heart-rate monitor slowly changed, the number of beats per minute increasing, the rhythm of her heart smoothing out. Bashir waited, but few other readings improved. In particular, her neural activity remained dramatically low, a consequence almost unheard of with the use of cordrazine. Strangely, though, the neural energy of the Dax symbiont, though skewed, measured at a level not much different from normal.